I’m here to talk about how Shinkai Makoto is derivative. Just not in the way that everyone thinks he is.
The obvious criticism levied against him is that he borrows too heavily from Miyazaki. Which in his latest film, Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below, is somewhat true, but also short sighted. For Miyazaki himself is not innocent of drawing a bit too deeply from the wellspring of our collected aesthetic consciousness.
Like any other ambitious animator, Miyazaki started as a lowly grunt and worked his way up from thankless in-betweens, to key frame animation, character designer, and beyond. Along the way his aesthetic sense would be massaged by the senior staff and house style of the studio.
Ganba's Adventure (1975)
Nishimura Takayo, character designer and 2D animation director for Children, trained under Kabashima Yoshio, a contemporary of Miyazaki during his time at Toei Animation. Through the 70’s both men would be influenced by World Masterpiece Theater series, which adapted classic tales as family-oriented anime. Kobashima countered what he felt were stale retreads with original stories such as Ganba’s Adventure; Miyazaki would work on the Japanese retelling of Anne of Greene Gables before leaving Nippon Animation.
Anne of Green Gables (1979)
Shinkai has stated that the style of Children aims to emulate World Masterpiece Theater (fitting, given the 70’s setting), meaning that if the results look like Miyazaki, it’s because they’re drawing from the same inspirations. The same talent pool, as well. Many of the artists on the film, including background matte painters, have a history with Studio Ghibli. When you’re enlisting the same cooks with the same ingredients, it's inevitable that tastes blend. It all boils down to how your house tweaks the recipe.
Miyazaki built his career on parables of man vs. nature, progress vs. tradition, haves vs. have-nots. In contrast to this bevy of social messages, Shinkai comes off as introverted to the point of self-centeredness. Shinkai is primarily concerned with the distance between people, either the physical or mental, and the drama created in closing that gap. At the end of the day he doesn’t care if you’re a proletariat or bourgeoisie, so long as you’ve learned to love yourself.
Magical gemstones, luddite nostalgism, a young girl protagonist thrown out of her element in a fantastic world—All tropes Miyazaki has claimed a monopoly over out of repetition. Let’s be realistic—Even Miyazaki is aping his own style by this point.
Still, Shinkai declares his love for Laputa, perhaps a bit too loudly. But this is to overcompensate for his first nerd-crush that inspired him to join the industry: The PC-88 intro to Falcom’s action RPG, Y’s II.
Y's II Eternal (2001)
Here we see overlapping themes—Girl meets boy from another world, high fantasy and flying islands, mystical necklaces. Years later Shinkai would be given the opportunity to create the cinematics for the Windows remake where we see his lo-fi upbringing pushed to its artistic limits.
Speaking of borrowing from what you love, steampunk didn’t exactly originate in Japan, and girls were adventuring in Wonderland long before Chihiro. If you want to say that Shinkai’s films sprouted from Miyazaki’s, I’ll give you that. But you have to realize that Miyazaki’s world is firmly rooted in the works of another, the manga artist Morohoshi Daijiro.
Morohoshi Daijiro's Yokai Hunter (1974)
Without any titles available on English, Morohoshi’s presence may not be obvious to western audiences. Following his 1970 debut in COM he quickly became the poster boy for manga connoisseurs, lauded by critics but only mildly successful in commercial magazines. Miyazaki is on record stating that Morohoshi's detailed yet lumpy line work inspired the sketchy penciling in the Nausicca manga. Dig deeper into Morohoshi’s themes and it becomes apparent that the director cribbed more than just his style.
Morohoshi Daijiro's Mud Men (1979)
Mud Men, based around creation myths of the eponymous tribe from Papa New Guinea and what happens when greedy outsiders anger the indigenous forest spirits, plays out like a gender-flopped version of Princess Mononoke.
Morohoshi is famous for weaving folklore into the every day, another technique unfairly attributed as a Miyazaki-ism. This influence is clearly present in Children as well. With Agartha, Shinkai attempts to tie world mythology together with a common thread that runs through underworld legends, while at the same time verifying them through the pseudo-science hollow earth theory.
At an earlier point down the same narrative vector, we have Morohoshi’s Dark Legend of Confucius, which connects the Brahmins of India, five element theory of China, and the historic first peoples of Japan through Ying-Yang dualism as a universal binary code that can be deciphered by analyzing the Analects of, you guessed it—Confucius.
Miyazaki builds new worlds of high fantasy from low technology. Shinkai and Morohoshi build upon existing worlds with high theological concepts.
I can't find my copy of Dark Legend to scan, so here's a clay model of the Jomon guardian spirit. (Source)
There’s also the striking visuals of Agartha. The terracotta structures populating the underground world are adorned with organic line work reminiscent of motifs from Japan’s pre-historic Jomon period. Once again, Morohoshi beat him to the punch by several decades with Ankoku Shinwa, or Dark Legend (no relation to Confucius this time), where Haniwa sculptures with Jomon patterns serve as the key to opening the forbidden lands underneath Kofun burial mounds. Not a glowing gemstone per se, though still a McGuffin cut from the same bedrock.
Traveling through an underground gate with a mythical key to usurp forbidden knowledge from the center of creation, all the while being pursued by faceless demons once the sun sets—Suddenly, Children sounds less like Laputa and more like Lovecraft’s The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath. Just swap in Randolph Carter, the silver key, Nightgaunts, and the Plateau of Leng! You've already got the guardian cats and moon barges.
You can draw an unbroken line of influence from Shinkai to Miyazaki to Morohoshi to Lovecraft, and continue it onward to Lord Dunsany’s dream fiction and beyond should you be ambitious enough. My point—I don’t want to see Miyazaki become to anime what Tezuka is to manga: Omnipresent, over quoted, and unchallenged. Both artists are geniuses, but their image has grown to such titanic proportions that we overlook the giants whose shoulders they stand on.
If you want to criticize Children for being derivative, you should, because it is, but please keep in mind that the source material is also derivative in its own ways. The film has more pressing issues, such as the motiveless protagonist, visually striking though otherwise unmotivated journey across Agartha, and ending theme that is horrifically sincere in a way that only singer-songwriters can manage.
Despite some whiffs in the characterization and pacing, Children is still worth seeing, if just to track the growth of one of anime’s most interesting talents. Just leave your Ghibli bias at the door, as counter-intuitive it may feel at first.
H.P. Lovecraft’s greatest fear has come true. No, I don’t mean the return of eldritch horrors from beyond space-time to engulf our world in the black flames of madness—quite the opposite, in fact. I refer to his controversial obsession with hereditary degradation, the corruption of nobility through generations of inbreeding or contamination from foreign blood. Japan has spared no mercy in proving that, given enough iterations, not even the Gods are immune from tainted genetics.
Look no further than The Crawling Cuteness! Nyarl-Ko, the newest entry into the Mythos, to see how far the Great Old Ones have fallen.
The long-faced apron is the only link to the source material.
The flash anime is based on a series of light novels that ostensibly draw their influence from Lovecraft-themed video games and tabletop RPGs, which are in turn based on the original works that began to trickle into the country in the late 1940’s. How did Cthulhu and company go from serious literature favored by Japan’s masters of weird fiction to a self-parody unrecognizable to even stalwart fans?
The harrowing journey towards the answer is an unsettling one that begins with hushed whispers of awe and concludes with the collective guffaws of the Internet. Take my hand as we trace the source of decay through history.
Yes, people took this stuff seriously at one time (and some still do)!
The 1940’s: EdogawaRampo Approved
The first overtly Lovecraft inspired tale appeared in the November/December 1947 issue of the mystery anthology Pearl, with NishioTadashi’s Grave, a faithful retelling of The Statement of Randolph Carter in which an ex-British soldier recalls his horrific experience in a foggy graveyard to his Japanese friend. The narration is bookended by observations from his companion, whose humorous descriptions of the gregarious, excitable, and predictably blue-eyed foreigner ruins any suspense built up by the tale. Still, for the author and his associates, it must have been the ultimate in-joke—the same raisond'être for many works amongst Lovecraft’s community of letter writers.
In the post war years, imported pulp fiction passed from person to person, circulated around a tightly-knit group like third-generation VHS bootlegs during the tape trading days. Nishio was in deep, but not as deep as EdogawaRampo, father of the Japanese detective genre. Rampo's popular treatises on amazing stories introduced his countrymen to a new breed of weird fiction and expanded their horizons, like a literary version of the Peel sessions.
At some point EdogawaRampo was floated a copy of The Dunwich Horror and Other Weird Tales. Impressed with what he found within, he brought Lovecraft to the public’s attention for the first time by applauding him in his list of essential weird tales, The Reader’s Guide to Horror Stories, which ran as part of his column, Castle of Illusion, in the June 1948 issue of Jewel (which was a mystery anthology supervised by Rampo himself).
This seal of approval from the contemporary leader of the field was the equivalent to having your passport stamped by customs, and was the piece of paper that helped under-recognized Western authors find their foothold on Japanese soil, Lovecraft included. The piece praises The Dunwich Horror, In the Vault, The Music of Erich Zann, The Outsider, and The Color Out of Space, in addition to Machen’s The Great God Pan and Blackwood’s The Willows, both of which Lovecraft has professed being influenced by.
The 1950’s and 1960’s: Madness Takes Root
Over the following decades, translations of Lovecraft and his contemporaries slowly creep into the pages of Jewel and other anthologies with ponderous regularity, beginning with
KajimaYozo’s The Rats in the Walls in the July 1955 issue of Bungei, and followed later that year by TamuraYuji’s The Music of Erich Zann in the November issue of Jewel, the same magazine in which Rampo had previously sung its praise.
MizukiShigeru's take on Dr. Armitage versus Yog-Sothoth. (Source)
Other artists began taking interest in Lovecraft as well. Following the inclusion of The Dunwich Horror in the collection The Great Tales of the Supernatural and Uncanny (1956), MizukiShigeru, famous for his lighthearted horror manga based on haunted folklore, spun his version of the classic with Footfalls from Beneath (1963).
Set in Yatsume, a rural village on the outskirts of Tottori City, the basic plot remains largely unchanged save from its clever localization. Wilbur Whateley’s library is filled with volumes on Oriental mysticism and divination, not Western witchcraft. There is no mention of the stars being right, but the return of the Great Old Ones is described as being as eventual as the changing seasons. And Dr. Armitage defeats Yog-Sothoth (given the tongue-in-cheek name Yogurt) by reading an incantation from a scroll as it were a sutra.
Cover from the first edition of The God of the Cult. (Source)
Though gaining momentum, the movement was still taking baby steps, with Japanese releases far trailing the output of Arkham House. This makes TakakiAkimitsu’s The God of the Cult (1956) all the more impressive as the first original Japanese Mythos tale.
This sixty-page mystery opens with MurakamiKiyohiko, a well to-do miser on one of his frequent drunken wanderings around antique shops where he acquires an ominous black idol with seven fingers and a crowned head. He enlists the help of his friend, an amateur researcher of primitive art, in identifying the carved wooden relief, but to no avail. One thing’s for sure—The haunting gaze of the idol exudes a malicious aura.
Murakami is soon visited by an odd fellow whose otherwise impeccable Japanese is marred by his foreign upbringing. He has traveled from England in search of the idol, a priceless object of worship for his religion—the cult of Chuuloo—who believe that mankind descended from a highly advanced civilization which sunk under the waves of the Pacific just north of Australia millennia ago, and that when we die our souls join our ancestors in their underwater city.
The visitor moves to purchase the idol for a hefty sum, which piques Murakami’s interest. There’s more to the carving than meets the eye, he muses, and turns down the offer for the sake of being contrary. Enraged, the visitor departs in a huff, but not before marking his host with the curse of Chuuloo.
Murakami’s brutalized corpse is discovered the next day and the idol vanishes, only to later reemerge at the scene of a second, seemingly unrelated murder. The story shifts from a Call of Cthulhu pastiche to a noir mystery, complete with resourceful beat cop and cock-sure detective. Readers are kept guessing as to the true nature of the accursed idol, christened the Plague Lord for the misfortune that follows its wake. Even when all supernatural leads are stamped out, a sick sense of dread sinks in. Seemingly benign or otherwise, the Chuuloo cults have made their presence known in Japan.
The 1970’s: The Stars Are Right
The Exorcist. Uri Geller. TsunodaJiro’s horror manga Newspaper of Fear. These ingredients combined to ignite nationwide interest in the occult and supernatural that burned fiercely until being extinguished by the AumShinrikyo's 1995 Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. Mythos literature rode this wave from the stuffy pages of mystery serials to the burgeoning field of sci-fi.
The extra edition of the September 1972 SF Magazine devoted a special space to Mythos tales, including The Black Stone, The Hound of Tindalos, Out of the Aeons, and The Haunter of the Dark. This distinction is important. The idea of an independent yet tangently related series of stories was starting to take hold. If August Derleth and Arkham House gave birth to the Mythos concept, then Japan had finally signed the adoption papers.
This ten volume series from KokushoKankokai was released regularly from October 1984 to June 1986. Many will recognize the jacket art, Spell III by H.R. Giger, from the front cover of the artist's Necronomicon.
Soon after, Sogensha and other mystery/sci-fi publishers began producing collections of stories from the writers in Lovecraft’s inner circle that were similar to Arkham House’s catalog. The translations would continue well into the 1980’s, as Seishinsha picked up where other companies left off.
The 1980’s: Roll For Sanity Check
Dungeon-crawl computer RPGS like Wizardry and Ultima were widely successful in Japan and players were hungry for more fantasy. When computer gaming magazines introduced Dungeons & Dragons as the grandfather of these beloved PC titles, they unwittingly caused a TRPG boom. D&D hit in 1983, inspiring Japanese enthusiasts to create the more accessible Road of Rule in 1984.
The paper and electronic markets created a positive feedback loop of borrowed ideas and innovation. Garry Gygax’s Monster Manual laid the groundwork for Sakaguchi’s Final Fantasy; video games stimulated youth interest and demand for cheap rulebooks (market standard box sets came with cumbersome literature and a whopping 5000 yen price not reflective of the low production values,) which resulted in pen and paper systems such as 1989’s Sword World RPG that pioneered the A6 sized, highly portable, and affordable bunkobon format.
Cover slip from the first Japanese release of Call of Cthulhu. "A realm of darkness you must not cross into." (Source)
As the isle of Lodoss first materialized in the pages of computer gaming mag Comptiq, so too was R’lyeh raised from the depths via Hobby Japan’s 1986 release of Call of Cthulhu, Chaosim’s horror fiction tabletop role-playing game. The tome brought eldritch horror to a new audience previously accustomed to Tolkien-derived hack and slash style dice chucking. Gamers were all too quick to ingest and internalize the utterly alien worldview held within, and it wasn’t long before the Great Old Ones began to spill over into related media.
A year after Call of Cthulhu entered the playing field, Hummingbird Soft released
Laplace’s Demon for the PC-88, a survival horror RPG that borrowed its system and 1920’s American Midwest setting from the aforementionedTRPG. The player and their posse investigate a haunted mansion located on the outskirts of the sleepy town of Newkham, Massachusetts, where you solve puzzles, battle otherworldly entities, and, depending on your tolerance for torturous gameplay, go insane.
Success or failure relies on the makeup of your team. Gumshoes are handy with guns, spirit mediums can damage incorporeal foes, journalists snap photos of monsters that you sell in the town for cash, scientists create bizarre devices, and dilettantes are ace puzzle solvers. Sadly, the unique concept is bogged down by its unforgiving difficulty, brutal even in an era of purposefully impossible games. The notoriously confusing 1st person dungeon exploration (can’t shake the curse of Wizardry) is made incomprehensible by traps that turn you around without you knowing. Story events won’t trigger without the proper characters in your party, and you die if your sanity meter—which doubles as your magic points—drops to zero.
Ironically, Comptiq, the same magazine that helped kick off the TRPG boom that resulted in Laplace’s Demon, ran six months worth of strategy articles featuring maps and puzzle solutions.
Evil Sacred Sword: Necromancer. Giger and Lovecraft go together like Doom and Metallica.
Though the game’s obtuse nature limited its appeal, it made it trendy for computer and console RPGs to cherry-pick Mythos monsters to round out their demonic host. Hudson Soft’s Evil Sacred Sword: Necromancer (1988) featured an all-star cast of Great Old Ones led by Azathoth, and the MegamiTensei series was never coy about where it cribbed Vile-aligned deities from. The TRPG would be buried under the collectable card game boom of the early 90’s, yet titles such as these allowed Cthulhu and his ilk to live on digitally, waiting for their time to once again rise to the spotlight.
Even confectionary maker Lotte jumped on the name dropping bandwagon with Fortress of Neclos, a swords and sorcery dice game played with rubber figures (that change color in the sun) and treasure cards distributed within booster boxes that also contained chocolate-coated graham cracker eggs. Imagine HeroClix with Barbarians and Minotaurs instead of Wolverine and Sentinels, made all the more addictive by a sweet candy shell.
The story is a collection of fantasy tropes that were stale even at the time. Long, long ago, the Dark Lord waged war with the Creator for control of the land, only to be defeated by eight virtuous warriors and sealed away. Now, as the Dark Lord’s minions move to revive him, the descendents of the original heroes must stand up and retrace the footsteps of their ancestors.
Cthulhu as he appears in Fortress of Neclos. (Source)
Each series featured eight playable characters and a colorful bestiary brimming with monsters and deities re-appropriated from world mythology and religion. In the eighth and final series, Neclos calls down the planet R’lyeh, and with it Cthulhu and his followers, Tsathoggua, Nyarlathotep, and Innsmouth (a common solecism for Deep Ones or those with the Innsmouth look).
(Cover to Great Old One Gourmet illustrated by Amano Yoshitaka.)
Modern Mythos literature was emerging as well. Kikuchi Hideyuki, better known as the father of the Demon City Shinjuku and Vampire Hunter D series, pens the first Lovecraft parody novel, Great Old One Gourmet (1984). The story features your go-to ingredients of trash literature—snappy dialogue, lavish descriptions of gore, and sexy chicks—while the narrative plays out like an Arkham House edition of mad libs. Structures are cyclopean. Revelations are maddening. And Cthulhu… he hungers.
Protagonist Naihara Fumio is a master chef in the school of disgusting delicacies. The slimier the vegetable, the more rotten the meat, the more vomit-inducing the seasoning, the more brilliant the result. Of course, finding one with taste buds sophisticated enough to appreciate the subtle texture of mold soufflé is another matter altogether. Enter Abdul Alhazred, whose master would be very interested in sampling Naihara’s cooking. You can’t bring forth madness and the end of the world on an empty stomach. But time is of the essence. The constellations click into position like a doomsday clock, and Cthulhu isn’t the only God who hasn’t been fed in strange aeons.
Naihara finds himself as the MacGuffin in a globe-spanning adventure with every branch of the U.S. Military and sect of dark cultists vying for his golden spoon. It’s Professor Armitage’s grandson and the U.N.’s Anti-Cthulhu League against the Marsh family’s shipping conglomerate and deprived Dunwich yokels. Can the Whateleys' pickup trucks and shotguns compete against rivers of fish men? Can Dagon punch through the hull of a nuclear sub? And how good does your cooking need to be to make a Great Old One literally eat their heart out?
Listen, hear that brittle creaking sound? It’s the collective sanity of the Mythos, starting to crack.
The 1990’s: Instability in the Mythos
The media mix model of cross-pollinated entertainment guarantees that a successful franchise will bleed into neighboring mediums. With Lovecraft games and books booming, it was only a matter of time before manga and light novels were assimilated into the collective, starting with Juan Gotoh's Alicia Y in 1994.
If this wasn't the 90's I'd swear I was looking at a Toho character.
One hundred and eleven years after Jack the Ripper terrorized London, the city is hit by a similar string of grisly slayings. Demigod Alicia Y. Armitage (or Whateley, depending on which side of the family you ask) knows that something far more wicked than mere foul play is afoot. The Elizabethan magician John Dee has been resurrected and is searching for the entrance to R'lyeh, rumored to be somewhere along the Thames River. The day of Cthulhu's awakening is close at hand, and unless Alicia and her cat familiar Nyarlathotep intervene, the British Isles will be the appetizer for a global smorgasboard of extinction.
Nyarlathotep pays a house call to Randolph Carter on the Moon.
With a setup like that, it seems that the manga would write itself. Unfortunately, for every hit, the story whiffs twice. Not enough to strike out, but not home run material either. Alicia is a socially adjusted, Miskatonic educated Wilbur Whateley, though the details of her divine ancestory and troubled upbringing are sadly glossed over. Stonehenge promises to be the site of a dramatic wizard duel, only to be hijacked by werewolf martial artists. And when Cthulhu finally answers the call to raze the city, he doesn't even topple the Tower of London—it feels like he's phoning it in.
Fans begin to head for the hills with the release of Izumi Makoto’s erotic action adventure novel Demon Hunter (1998). The heartwarming story follows Nanamori Sarah, a pert female martial artist with monster slaying blood pumping through her developing body, in the sensual struggle to rescue her bubble-brained best friend from the twisted tentacles of the Cult of Dagon.
Masamune Shiro provides sanity blasting illustrations that reach down deep inside your most shameful of recesses to pull your Cowper’s gland out of your nose hole. It’s worth noting that the publisher, Seishinsha, was responsible for a bulk of Lovecraft anthologies from the 80’s. Works like this are now the publisher’s bread and butter in a genre of young adult literature that still hasn’t caught on in the west: Juvenile erotica.
The Mythos were becoming sexier with each passing year. And once you cross that line and fetishize something, there’s no going back to a platonic relationship.
I can't believe Atelier Sabusawa's Angel Foyson was green-lit, much less released in Korean.
Notable as the first of many titles to anthromorphise the utterly alien and unknowingly infinite pantheon as rosy-cheeked young debutantes, the dramady romance manga Angel Foyson (1999) follows Kodo Susumu, a high school student whose ying and yang are all out of whack, leaving him chronically anemic though optimistically cheerful. Lucky for him he has a harem of muffin haired cuties (and dreamy femboys) queued up to suck out his bad mojo, including Azathoth, Nyarlathotep, and Atlach-Nacha.
If you thought Oh! My Goddess was great because of the callbacks to Norse mythology, then you'll love Angel Foyson for its ham-fisted Mythos references. After class the kids trip out on Golden Mead to study for the entrance exams at the Great Library of Celaeno. Egyptian priestesses setup fortune telling shops at the school festival. The girls use their extra-dimensional powers to help the protagonist break the school track record. It's all fun and games until grumpy daddy Nodens finds out! Tee-hee.
All of these titles are as awful as they sound, and would normally be curtailed to an eye-rolling footnote, but they must be mentioned, as they are the source of our modern mind rot. They are the missing link between weird fiction and moe, the breaking point when the Mythos officially crossed over from the realm of cosmic horror to the dismal land of self-parodying trope (all while beating plush Cthulhu to the punch).
Never one to pass up a chance to troll, the Mythos are now deeply enough ingrained in nerd subculture that it becomes worth 2-Chan’s time to take a piss at. Their 2002 Cthulhu Mythos Moe thread has been preserved here for alien archeologists to puzzle over when they exhume the ruins of our doomed civilization.
Moe moe version of The Hounds of Tindalos.
The thread had a profound effect on people. Its saccharine-coated claws had dug out a hole in our hearts, a hole that could only be filled with more sexy anthropomorphic monsters. The Moe Moe Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia was among the first of these demon seeds to bud in September 2009 and takes the 2-Chan meme to its logical, though no less damning, conclusion.
Everything you wanted to know about Lovecraft light novels can be found here.
Then June 2010 saw the stars quake in ecstasy with the dual release of My Maid is an Amorphous Blob, the tale of a boy and his blob cosplaying Shoggoth, and The Magickal Girl R'lyeh Lulu, a return to form for tentacle rape and youth erotica.
Nyarl-ko strikes a Kamen Rider pose. Too bad all the gags are from Heiwa Rider.
Amongst all the bizarre activity in recent memory, none are as prolific and disquieting as The Crawling Cuteness! Nyarl-Ko. As mentioned at the beginning of the article, the themes and settings of the series (six books and counting) draw from the well of Lovecraftian lore, but like the Blasted Heath, the source has been corrupted by some poisonous entity outside our graciously finite sphere of comprehension.
Yet all hope is not lost. Just as there are brave investigators working against the malignant forces that conspire to release unfathomable terror into our world, there are artists creating works that help counteract the ever-expanding intellectual blight.
One of the many recent manga adaptations produced by Molice. (Source)
The April 2010 issue of SF Magazine introduced modern Mythos authors to a Japanese audience. Likewise, Japan has its own lineup of indigenous Mythos authors, and Kurodahan Press has released several English language compilations of their work. Molice, leading Lovecraft researcher, has been producing manga adaptations of essential stories including The Call of Cthulhu, At the Mountains of Madness, and The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Tabletop RPGs experienced a revival with the 2003 launch of the magazine Role and Roll, whose Call of Cthulhu “replays” have drawn fresh blood into the fold.
Lovecraft in Japan is an infinitely fascinating topic, a living organism as mutateable as the Mythos themselves. This article is merely the entrance to a great underground network that honeycombs throughout the bedrock laid by the old boys (and girls) at Arkham House.
If you’re interested, please check out past blog entries that explore the TV adaptation of The Shadow Over Innsmouth, the recent light novel explosion, and scans from the Moe Moe Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia. Also, check my notes for the Japanese spelling of titles and authors referenced in the article if you'd like to do some followup sluthing of your own.
NOTES 1940’s Pearl (真珠) was a short-lived mystery anthology that ran from 1947-1948. It featured Nishio Tadashi’s (西尾正) Grave (墓場), a reimagining of The Statement of Randolph Carter. The story has been recently reprinted in his 2nd collection of detective stories (西尾正探偵小説選). (Amazon link)
The mystery anthology Jewel (宝石) ran from 1946-1964. Editor Edogawa Rampo’s regular column, Castle of Illusion (幻影城), discussed speculative fiction. Its two-part must-read list, The Reader’s Guide to Horror Stories (怪談入門), was the big break that many domestic and international authors had been waiting for. (List of titles)
1950’s and 1960’s Takaki Akimitsu (高木 彬光) was a prolific author of mystery and horror. The God of the Cult (邪教の神) has been reprinted in modern collections, and its original printing is still readily available. (Amazon link)
The Great Tales of the Supernatural and Uncanny (幻想と怪奇2 -英米怪談集) introduced Lovecraft to a new generation, including Vampire Hunter D author Kikuchi Hideyuki and Gegege Kitaro creator Mizuki Shigeru, whose Footfalls from Beneath (地底の足音) is a manga adaptation of the Dunwich Horror. (Amazon Link)
1970’s SF Magazine (SFマガジン)
1980’s It’s worth mentioning the original Japanese titles of the various games without official translations.
Laplace’s Demon (ラプラスの魔) is officially known as DIABLE DE LAPLACE, though the hacked Super Nintendo ROM asserts the former.
Fortress of Neclos (ネクロスの要塞) should be Fortress of Necros, but I’m respecting the Engrish typo from the product.
Evil Sacred Sword: Necromancer (邪聖剣ネクロマンサー) was first released on the PC Engine (Turbografx-16 in the west). The cell phone sequel was recently ported to the DSi with no news of an English release in sight.
Kikuchi Hideyuki (菊池秀行), author of Great Old One Gourmet (妖神グルメ), has a surprising amount of works translated into English from his Vampire Hunter D and Wicked City series.
Works of H.P. Lovecraft (定本ラヴクラフト全集) are worth hunting down for the amazing Giger covers. (Amazon link)
1990’s Juan Goto (後藤寿庵) took a brief sabbatical from drawing pornographic manga to pen Alicia Y (アリシア・Y). This rare entry into the Japanese Mythos cycle was fetching prices of over 20,000 yen before it was reprinted as an e-book. (Download site)
Izumi Makoto’s (出海まこと) Demon Hunter (邪神ハンター) is best avoided and is here for the sake of completion.
Atelier Sibusawa (澁澤工房) is responsible for Angel Foyson (エンジェルフォイゾン).
2000’s and beyond Replays are records of TRPG sessions that range in complexity from simple play-by-play breakdowns to full blown novelizations. The recent Call of Cthulhu replays from Role&Roll (クトゥルフ神話TRPGリプレイ) may have questionable covers, but the content is reportedly true to the game. (Amazon link)
Follow Molice, leading Lovecraft researcher in Japan, on Twitter. (Twilog link)
Kurodahan Press translated a series of Japanese Mythos tales. (Site link)
Kaoru Kurimoto’s (栗本薫) epic Demon World Suikoden (魔界水滸伝) spanned over twenty books from 1981-1993 and served as the portal to Lovecraft’s realm for many people.
Reader's Guide to Cthulhu Mythos (クトゥルー神話の本) is the premiere Japanese language guide for Mythos trivia and contains a wealth of information about the early translation years.
August Derleth introduced a number of questionable elements to the works of H.P. Lovecraft. Posthumous “collaborations”, a paper-rock-scissors system of elemental rivalries between the Great Old Ones, a wholly altered interpretation of the Elder Sign. But above all, he allowed for the creation of fans, an invasion from the common man, the agents of atrophy in a previously closed environment.
Fandom is a slippery slope. If ten years ago you had told me that there would be Cthulhu plushies wearing Hawaiian shirts and bumper stickers showing Dagon eating a Darwin Fish eating a Jesus Fish, I would have laughed.
If a year ago you had told me that there would be a series of tween novels starring Mythos monsters personified as doe-eyed debutantes, I would have told you to go to Hell.
The Crawling Cuteness! Nyarl-Ko, My Maid is an Amorphous Blob, and The Magickal Girl R'lyeh Lulu are a trio of Light Novels (juvenile fiction with an emphasis on dialogue and humor over description and drama) planted firmly in the world of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, though their roots run deep into caverns shunned by even the most fearless Martense or Delapore. They take tropes established by harem and moe anime and run with them to the outer limits of the imagination, with results varying from groan inducing to genuinely clever.
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Title: The Crawling Cuteness! Nyarl-Ko (這い寄れ！ニャル子さん) Author: Aisora Manta (逢空万太) Art by: Koin (狐印) Published by: GX Bunko Volumes: Five and going strong Genre: Trouser-shrinking RPG gags
In the world of Nyarl-Ko, the Planetary Protection Organization polices the cosmos and ensures that the Prime Directive—which restricts alien intelligences from meddling in the matters of developing planets—is carried out at all costs. The job is trickier than it sounds, given that Earth's entertainment is the intergalactic gold standard, thus attracting no shortage of smugglers willing to risk life and pseudopod for contraband Dojinshi and porn games.
Our mild-mannered high school protagonist, Mahiro, possesses just the right level of androgynous castrati beauty that drives lonely housewives into fits of thigh-grinding frustration. In a normal world, his looks would land him on the casting couch of some boy band mogul with his pants around his ankles. Instead, they’ve made him the target of a human trafficking organization looking to send his sweet cheeks off to be shuckled in an interspecies homoerotic daytime soap opera. Different means, same end.
Enter Nyarl-Ko, one of a race of Nyarlathoteps, whose demure appearances beguile her world-leveling powers and destructive sexual appetite. The Planetary Protection Organization dispatches her to protect Mahiro from his would-be abductors and break up a smuggling ring operating out of R’lyeh. She fights off Nightgaunts, brutalizes Nodens, and gives the protagonist the biggest case of blue balls he’s ever suffered during his sixteen years. Mahiro resists her molestation attempts and won’t be taken in by her supple appearance—he knows that underneath the mask of Nyarlathotep lurks a horror beyond his comprehension.
Shantanks love carrots! The wackiness never stops when Nyarl-Ko's around.
Despite the blatant disregard for established Mythos protocol, the first volume was enjoyable, providing its fair share of snarky grins. The author clearly knows his pulp horror and isn't afraid to slaughter a sacred cow (or herds) for comedic effect. Sadly, the quality evaporates quickly over future volumes as he introduces an increasingly inbred cast of paper-thin personalities and limp-wrist punch lines. Cthugha is a Loli lesbian! Hastur is a gay Shota! If these sentences are incomprehensible to you, then you’d do yourself well to turn back from whence it came, least you open up a vista of unspeakable madness.
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Title: My Maid is an Amorphous Blob (うちのメイドは不定形) Author: Shizukawa Tasso (静川龍宗) Based on a concept by: Morise Ryo (森瀬繚) Art by: Ayakura Jyu (文倉十) Published by: Smash Bunko Volumes: One nail was enough to close this coffin. Genre: Big sister doting romance
Araizawa Toru has daddy issues. You can’t really blame him. His father, a self-proclaimed archeologist, watched idly as his wife and daughter walked out on the family while he ventured the globe. Now, he’s left his 9th grade son to fend for himself in order to make time to chase rumors of ruins in uncharted regions of Antarctica. But good old dad has just the ticket to make up for the years of neglect and fix his son’s abandonment complex—a perky maid, mailed freeze dried directly from the Mountains of Madness!
It doesn’t take long for Tekeli, the emerald-eyed Shoggoth, to get to work in picking up the pieces of Toru’s life, both figuratively and literally. He finally has someone to clean the dusty mansion he calls home, make his lunches, and send him off to school with a smile. He finally has his mother back. But these halcyon days are too soon beset by a storm of black magic.
Asahi Peabody, transfer student from Arkham, Massachusetts and latest in a long line of magicians, knows a cosmic horror when she sees one. And to command as fearsome of an entity as a Shoggoth, Toru must be an accomplished sorcerer in his own right. Against the advice of her cat-shaped familiar,Balor, she declares a wizard war on her unsuspecting classmate.
Shoggoth are a servitor race. Just like French maids.
My Maid is an Amorphous Blob is sometimes heartwarming, but mostly just embarrassingly calculated. Far too much page space is dedicated to selling the chibi-Tekelis, a platoon of mini-maids resulting from the Shoggoth’s unique physiology which allows them to split their cells into any number of independently controlled organisms. Naturally, one of them stows away in Toru’s pocket and the reader has to suffer the accompanying wacky hijinks. Still, it goes on to cover the history of the Elder Things’ war with the Great Old Ones and Mi-Go, keeping it from being a total wash for Mythos fans. Think of it as a way to get your girlfriend interested in Lovecraft, assuming she has the brain mass of an intelligent space vegetable.
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Title: The Magickal Girl R'lyeh Lulu (魔海少女ルルイエ・ルル) Author: Hazawa Koichi (羽沢向一) Art by: Pierre Yoshio (ピエ〜ル☆よしお) Published by: Atomic Bunko Volumes: One, with more waiting in the wings. Genre: Magical girl rape comedy
R'lyeh needs women! And men, and anyone else available to worship Great Cthulhu. Everyone’s favorite Great Old One has sent its adorable daughter, Lulu, up from under the sea to where the people are in order to drum up cult membership. Her winning smile is as infectious as the latest pop sensation, and if her cute-as-a-button looks let her down, she’s got her daddy’s tentacles to weasel her way into the hearts (and panties) of her classmates.
True to her idol singer fashion, Lulu’s fans end up bruised and broken on the business end of her pseudopods, prostate in worship and begging for more. The thrill of domination and the mindless joy of subservience leap from the pages and electrify your most base desires with a cacophony of whip cracks accompanied by the wet sucking of trembling lips on sugar cubes. The stock protagonist, Naoya, begins as an impotent virgin, but is soon hardened into deflowerer extraordinaire by a gauntlet of forced urethral play. Arisa, the sadistic queen bee of the school, rules with an iron fist until Lulu cleans out her honey pot.
Any Mythos references are mere plot contrivances to grease the action between the sheets. Imagine the damage that a Hound of Tindalos could do with its piercing, proboscis tongue. The Son of Yog-Sothoth is at that age where a young boy’s fancy turns to violent tentacle rape. And the Deep Ones are skilled with their webbed hands, as luck would have it.
The publisher, Atomic Pocket Novels, guarantee to turn your little boy into a fat man or your money back. They titillate the reader with the best that harlequin horror has to offer. “He gazed hotly into her puckered abyss of unspeakable symmetry.” “His passion ignited the flesh which came from beyond the stars.” “Her divine lineage was the only thing keeping her internal organs from spilling across the pavement”. Sex need not be pleasant, or even consensual.
Busty blondes trampling boys, reverse tentacle rape, loli-pops: Lulu in a nutshell.
Lulu may not break new ground by combining eldritch monsters with nubile young co-eds, but it makes up for that by being the most self-conscious piece of pornography ever forged by man. It goes out of its way to cutoff any moral quandaries the reader may have, leaving them to revel in the cosmic orgy guilt free. So what if Lulu is the most corrosive kind of jailbait since Morning Musume? The main character doesn’t have a Lolita complex, so as long as he complains about her flat chest during intercourse, there’s totally nothing weird about it. And besides, she’s the one that started it! A graphic depiction of rape is spun into the villain playing right into the heroine’s hand. The tone swings from deprived and demented to sugar and spice in one coquettish wink.
Such a lobotomized world caters perfectly to the audience’s taste. People will pay good money to avoid having to think for themselves. Everyone is free to be a pervert in their own mind, but if you’re tortured by your repressed desire, at least have the self-respect to take off the training wheels. Lulu makes the rest of us sickos look bad by comparison.
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From a fan perspective, the burning question is: So what do these titles bring to the Mythos? Well, practically nothing.
Apart from clever name-dropping and borrowed settings, none of the stories bare the slightest semblance to Lovecraft’s revered works. Granted, the Light Novel medium isn’t designed to create anything greater than parody or self-serving juvenile fantasy. In that regard, it fulfills its role admirably.
This intellectual vacuum gives birth to a liberating revelation—why linger slavishly to past authorship and ideas? Admiration comes in many forms, with imitation being the greatest form of flattery, and innovation the pinnacle of devotion. A truly worthy adaptation, be it cover song, film, or moe-ization, makes possible what would be impossible for the original author. It adds to the work by detracting from its bad habits.
These books have Lovecraft spinning in his grave and the villagers running for their torches to slay the monster. But consider this—tasteless as they may be, they can only be fully appreciated (and hated) by the most stalwart of followers.
In the end we only have the fans to blame, or thank, depending on which side of the fence you fall onto. Stuffed Cthulhus paved the way for anthropomorphic body pillows of a lithe Nyarlathotep. Lulu rode the soundless wings of Nyaruko out of the void of our paradoxical modern morals to simultaneously repel and tantalize. Once culture has reached its highest point, it can only spiral downwards, and I for one am excited to see what depths of depravity it is willing to descend to.
Title: The Shadow Over Innsmouth (インスマスを覆う影) Year: 1992 Produced by: TBS Director, writer: KonakaChiaki (小中千昭) Starring: SanoShiro (佐野史郎) Genre: Eldritch Romance Japanese adaptations of Lovecraft’s works have largely been limited to the printed page and video games, perhaps mercifully so considering the cinematic catastrophes called down by well-meaning film makers the world over. Yet every so often, one oozes to the surface like ichor from the wounds of some unfortunate god buried alive under the rubble of contemporary culture. InnsmouthwoOouKage, aka The Shadow Over Innsmouth, is once such anomaly.
Writer and director KonakaChiaki (Marebito, Serial Experiments Lain, The Big O, multiple made-for-TV adaptations of horror manga ) and leading man SanoShiro (Evil Dead Trap 2, Kansen, TeitoMonogatari, various EdogawaRampo adaptations) are bound-by-blood mythosafficionados. Though normally you would be correct in passing over anything made by network TV, especially a horror film, things are a little different when you've got the Japanese equivalent of Stuart Gordon and Jeffrey Combs on the case. Rumors of the made for TV movie have circulated amongst the most devoted of followers, presumably making the rounds on a singular unmarked VHS cassette. At last, the footage has clawed its way up from unfathomable depths, to stand on the shores of the Internet before being dragged back down by overbearing network watchdogs.
Youtube presents the film in 7 parts. There are no subtitles, so I have provided a running commentary under each video for those of you sane enough to forgo the ancient tongue. For those of you proficient in the maddening runes, you may proceed to Niko Niko Douga to enjoy some wwww with your Iä, Iä!
PART I
A number of queer coincidences conspire to bring our protagonist, a freelance photographer played by SanoShiro, to the worm-eaten village of Innsmouth. After encountering a grotesquely featured man on the streets of Tokyo, rifling through the company archives reveals a photograph taken in Innsmouth of a person with identical deformities. His cursory research into Innsmouth is inconclusive, only managing to scrounge up an article from a weekly gossip mag detailing an incident involving the decayed corpse of a fish man washing up into the bay.
He convinces his boss (who bears a striking resemblance to Lovecraft) to send him to the forgotten hamlet. Through their interplay we learn that the protagonist has a sordid past. His father is deceased and mother is hospitalized in Room 209, suffering from an unspecified illness.
At (6:05) he arrives at the most ominous of crossroads, teetering on the edge between Arkham, Dunwich, Kingsport, and Innsmouth. The bus driver is unusually suspicious and standoffish, leaving our protagonist in the dust when he steps off to break a bill for his fare.
While contemplating his next move he is accosted by a rough codger who warns him to stay far away from Innsmouth. He spins tales of the fishing village, once frightfully prosperous with its catch, now impoverished and dying, with only old people left to hold up the rotting infrastructure.
Luckily for our hero, he manages to hitch a ride with a local Arkham girl who runs deliveries between Innsmouth and the neighboring areas. He waves off her playful advances as The Doors paint it black around them. Part 2
Having arrived at Innsmouth, the delivery girl offers him her card and, in more ways than one, a cheap ride back to the city.
At (2:05) our protagonist rolls his first sanity check at the local greasy spoon, the Fujimiya Eatery.
Next he checks into the Fujimiya Inn, talking the reluctant owner into letting him stay the night.
Near the end of Part 2, he encounters the beautiful woman he glimpsed on the bus who bears an odd semblance to the one from his dreams.
Part 3
The protagonist wanders into the Innsmouth Folk Museum. Upon meeting the curator, the he immediately deduces from the lack of accent that he is not a local. This is partially true, the curator assents. Born in Innsmouth, he left for Tokyo, only to return 3 years prior to his hometown nestled in the mountains.
The two discuss the pictures on the wall taken by the famous photographer, FujimiyaIemon. Our narrator comments that, while he used to find these works repugnant, as of late he has grown to appreciate, and perhaps even view them fondly.
When pressed about the beautiful woman seen in town, the curator chuckles knowingly. “She’s a widower, of sorts...”
Afterward the protagonist catches up with the mysteriously youthful widow. As they pause for a drink, she remarks that the water in town tastes vile. The contents of the glass she holds were taken from the mountain, where the streams are clean and sweet.
Once again the protagonist notices the lack of accent. It is revealed that she is not of Innsmouth stock, but rather was brought here an unspecified time ago.
Upon returning to the inn, he finds that his film has been stolen. His attempts at police intervention are foiled when he comes under suspicion himself, grilled by the officer in a Kafkaesque exchange. “Do you have any ID? No? If you can’t prove who you are, you’re no-one. You’re no-one.”
PART IV
Later that night, the protagonist manages to snap some shots of a strange ritual on the beach.
Against his better judgment, he has begin to fit together pieces of the puzzle. He notices that everyone in town shares the family name Fujimiya. Returning to the Folk Museum, he inquires into the cultish activity witnessed on the beach. The curator is free with his information. The townsfolk idolize a being named Dagon though an amalgam of foreign, that is to say, Buddhist rituals, and indigenous sea-god worship.
Stranger still are the rumors scarcely believed even by those who whisper them. That the head fisherman pledged for his clan to live in the sea... That ocean provided its bountiful catch as reward for human sacrifice…
And the relic behind them? The Boat of Resurrection. When people die they are sent out to sea in this vessel where they are said to attain eternal life.
Reeling from the unfathomable horrors the curator’s hinted dialogue alludes to, the protagonist shirks, overcome by the damning feeling that he has seen all this before. As if to comfort him, the curator offers a piece of cryptic advice.
“Man needs to create stories. Where you were born, where you were raised, what you are doing at this very moment―These thoughts are nothing more than chapters in a story we create for ourselves, a story called ‘memory…’ These memories are mere illusions. Yet man needs these illusions to live... or so was written in a book I read, long ago."
At (5:00) we reunite with the delivery girl and learn of her history. Born in Arkham, she doesn’t want to be like all the others who left the region for Tokyo , a cowardly move she feels amounts to abandoning one's roots.
The protagonist echo’s the curator's previous statement. “Life is an illusion, so what does it matter?” Impressed by his unconventional insight, she invites him to spend a night in Arkham, but he blows off her advances with aloof flourish.
We return to the widow’s waiting arms. “I always knew you would come back,” she coos enigmatically. Just as things are heating up, Peeping Toms with hideous unblinking eyes show up to spoil the mood.
PART V
Delirious with fright, he staggers into the moonlit streets where he is grasped by a singularly grotesque man. The beast half-speaks, half-croaks a single word: The name of the protagonist!
In a fit of mad disgust and sexual frustration, he kills the man in cold blood and tramples the corpse. Unbeknownst to him, the delivery girl observed the brutal proceedings in their entirety.
Somehow he manages to stumble back to the inn, visions of his childhood memories becoming increasingly vivid and urgent. He has no time to contemplate their sinister implications, as a mob of ghastly vigilantes descend upon his room!
Ducking into a dim alleyway away from his pursuers, he phones the delivery girl, who returns his cruelty in kind. His hopes are dashed against the falling receiver.
PART VI
The mob finally catches up with him, but they are no longer interested in vengeance. It’s almost as if he’s been accepted into their brood.
He returns to the Folk Museum to make a series of maddening discoveries. First, pictures he has taken lined up next to those by FujimiyaIemon. Next, the blood-dripped corpse of the man he killed, placed in the Resurrection Boat.
As the insane reality presented by the facts at hand comes bearing down on him, the curator appears to give our chilling tale its last rights.
“Seeing your two photographs side by side, I finally understand. The family resemblance is striking... You did an awful thing to FujimiyaIemon, your father.”
“You were born fatherless in Tokyo , an only child, your mother hospitalized with an incurable disease and no hope of discharge. You hate yourself for abandoning your mother, and you hate yourself for resenting her for taking your life away. But this is a story you have crafted for yourself… It is an illusion, a memory. You were born in Innsmouth, as the son of FujimiyaIemon.”
“If you think I am lying, then answer me this. Who is this women in the picture with you?"
In a last ditch effort to save his sanity and soul, the narrator calls the hospital. Alas, his mother is not registered. There is no room 209. He has no choice but to gaze upon the true face of his father, and his future.
Meanwhile, the delivery girl, in a change of heart, arrives in Innsmouth to save him, only to be abducted by its monstrous inhabitants and forced to wear a ring, the same one seen on the beautiful widow’s hand.
Across town, mother and child are finally reunited...
PART VII
The curator sighs as he shuts a paperback edition of the Necronomicon, cursing his return to this shunned place.
On the beach, a trail of blood suggests that the father went out to sea to attain life eternal.
Our protagonist returns to the office, seeming no worse for wear, and delivers his film and report, titled The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Note the hilarious pen name, a literal translation of Lovecraft.
In the final reveal, he drives off into the sunset with the delivery girl, back to their ancestral birth place, to spawn a fresh batch of progeny.
Analysis
We can better understand the story by examining its differences from the source material. Namely, the thematic shift from external forces to internal forces. Lovecraft's story is driven by fear of outsiders who would "spoil" the pure, indigenous bloodline. Konaka's version instead focuses on a topic close to the heart of the nation's young people: The internal struggle and guilt of abandoning yours roots.
Rural depopulation is a serious problem in Japan. Farming villages have been irreversibly ravaged by a massive youth exodus to the cities, the Tokyo brain drain, which left behind only the older generation to tend the ancestral land. Those who remained are the ever-shrinking base of a peninsula eroded by the tides of change. When the old guard pass away, the village shall go under with them.
There are three classifications describing the pattern of youth movement towards the cities and away from the countryside: I-Turn, J-Turn, and U-Turn. They include those who leave and never return, those who leave but return to a nearby rural city, and those who leave and later return to their birthplace, in that order. Each of the main characters represents one of these archetypes and struggles with the weight of their choice.
They are aware that in fleeing to the city they are helping to dig their hometown's grave, hence the unresolved guilt. The protagonist, an I-Turner, was so loath to face his decision that instead he escaped into a false reality, complete with a fabricated lineage. Even so, he could not allow himself to be forgiven so easily, hence devising an invalid mother he would grow to hate, providing him the conduit to hate himself in turn.
The curator lacked the outlet for shame possessed by the protagonist, leaving the guilt to build up inside him over the years like a poison. Finally he could suffer no more and returned to Innsmouth, only to damn his own admission of sin. U-turners can be brought back home by similar emotions.
Between these two extremes is the delivery girl. She is proud of her roots, but not so much that she feels it necessary to stay in Innsmouth proper. Her base of operations is close enough to her hometown that she can live outside of it, free of guilt. A typical J-Turner, she strikes a balance between country and city living.
As a piece of entertainment, InnmouthwoOouKage does not improve on the themes of the original work, or even reproduce them accurately. Yet it is better off for it. Most adaptations meet one of two horrific ends. Either they lash themselves to the original and drown in their attempt to be foolishly faithful, or an otherwise perfectly serviceable film crashes onto the rocks for deviating too far from the projected course. (Resident Evil comes to mind.) The movie avoids both of these fates by taking the middle path, incorporating Lovecraftian themes and settings with a culturally relevant spin. As to be expected from a budget TV production, the end result may not be up to the standards of certain astringent fans, but it proves that Japan is more than capable of spinning weird tales on it's home turf.
Morohoshi Daijiro's Yokai Hunter (1974)
Morohoshi Daijiro's Mud Men (1979)
I can't find my copy of Dark Legend to scan, so here's a clay model of the Jomon guardian spirit. (Source)
Nightgaunt by Rob Thomas 
